How did we get this old... Yes, I've handled 8" floppies and recall loading programs from tape on my home computer. And I recall programs were written in BASIC, and you could get books in the library with source code, and if you typed it all correctly you would have a new program or game Kids these days, spoiled with their appstores

I hate to admit it but that author's two-year-old probably knows more about CLI than I do.

AND, I was very resistant to using a mouse at all when they first came out. If I recall correctly, I might have said something along the lines of it was a tool for idiots who were too lazy to know better.

AND, I recall the extreme frustration I felt when it took me forever to find a point and click item in 'Excel' when a simple command in 'Lotus 1-2-3' had the job done in seconds.

To be fair though, point and click has come a long way since then and I've become lazy in my dotage.

I remember main frame IBMs and Univacs and inputting data on punch cards and then running the punch cards through a machine that fed the data into the main frame, from which we could generate printouts on green paper. Who remembers those days?

You win, yours is bigger than mine. As @xenopeek so succinctly put it "How did we get this old"?

Without trying to highjack the thread I suppose, like most old timers, I can't help but envy today's up and comers who have so much more information and technology available to them. Then again, what if our parents had had what we had? What if Alexander the Great had had strike bombers? What if the Egyptians had had the crane?

Trying to get back on-topc I'll add that it is not new to say that change is inevitable. In the modern world change is both obligatory and rapid. To remain relevant software developers and users need to be aware of this. Us old farts may bask in past glories but we need to accept that what was, is no more.

You win, yours is bigger than mine. As @xenopeek so succinctly put it "How did we get this old"?

Without trying to highjack the thread I suppose, like most old timers, I can't help but envy today's up and comers who have so much more information and technology available to them. Then again, what if our parents had had what we had? What if Alexander the Great had had strike bombers? What if the Egyptians had had the crane?

Trying to get back on-topc I'll add that it is not new to say that change is inevitable. In the modern world change is both obligatory and rapid. To remain relevant software developers and users need to be aware of this. Us old farts may bask in past glories but we need to accept that what was, is no more.

To remain relevant, a developer has to stay employed--any gaps, and you're history... And a degree loses value every year after graduation. There are a lot of highly educated, very experienced unemployed people in the world.

tdockery97 wrote:I just read the whole article on the state of Windows, and I am not one bit surprised. I really think Windows 8 is a big nail in their coffin. It's going to be a horrendous failure following too closely behind the Vista debacle.

I wish it were THE 'big nail in their coffin'; it would be a vast relief for me -- an maybe a few others .

Sadly, MS can last a long time the way they are; a savvy marketing operation with stunted technology and a POWERFUL legal staff that earns/defends large portions of their revenue stream. As long as they can generate income through intimidating cell phone companies who use android into paying them a 'little on the side' for violating undisclosed patents, why would they need to innovate? And if 'secure boot' isn't much more an example of legal hard ball to limit competition versus technological necessity, just paint me pink and call me piggy...

Rant over (for the moment) .

Regarding the original topic of this thread, Linux Mint is a fine example of a well run technology organization. If LM was a for-profit company, you should be investing every shekel you have; Cinnamon is the clear DE winner in Linux for the foreseeable future, and MATE will be a part of LM as long as its loyal end users vote for it by 1> number of downloads and 2> end user involvement in the Forums. Clem is one smart cookie, and a leader committed to listening to his constituency. Because of that, Linux Mint is not going to shot two of its shining stars.

Rest happy, Catbuntu, all the lights are green -- you really have nothing to worry about.

I've been happily running LM 13 KDE on several of my workstations since the distro was first introduced. However, I have periodically tried out MATE and Cinnamon, both on a real PC and in Parallels VMs on a Mac. After each test, I have come away liking MATE much better than Cinnamon. This is perhaps because I liked the original Gnome 2, and MATE seems to emulate this venerable and efficient system better than Cinnamon does. In addition, I have had problems with Cinnamon, such as its inability to fit the screen to a preset resolution. Because it seems that the only distro still offering Gnome 2 is CentOS, and I much prefer Mint, I am very glad that Mint continues to develop and offer a good alternative in the form of MATE. I sincerely hope that Mint will not drop MATE in order to focus its resources on Cinnamon, as I would like to run Mint with MATE on my lower-end machines. Moreover, I like MATE so much that when the next LTS Mint emerges, I am considering switching from KDE to MATE.